


repechage

by inkspl0tches



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, maybe?????, revival, wtf is this honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3620901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspl0tches/pseuds/inkspl0tches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>french for rescuing; a practice in series competitions that allows participants who failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue to the next round. // baseball after the end of the world</p>
            </blockquote>





	repechage

**Author's Note:**

> this is for tumblr user the x-files aka katie. all compliments and complaints should be directed her way.

there are four things that are the same. endlessly, always. four things that he will always know to be true. four things he’d picked up between preschool and middle-age. four things he would have passed on to his son if he’d had the chance. not that his off-brand form of wisdom could have saved him, or anyone, in the end.

still, they are as follows: water is wet, gravity is at the center of all things, scully is (just is. in general terms, specifics don’t apply, not anymore) and a baseball diamond on a summer night is the closest you will ever be to anything as divine and illusory as heaven.

these are the things he knows. not necessarily in that order.

afterwards (it’s the end of the world as we know it, he’d told her. he'd hoped for a smile and gotten a shrug) he’d had to reevaluate his list. double-check his work. water was still wet, yes, but there was less of it. gravity was still holding down the fort, but it felt weaker. too many people had pulled away from him, from the earth, to believe it was as powerful as it had been. scully still was. scully still smiled at him, tired and with road dust caked into her boots and jeans. scully was still perpetually bruised and blue-eyed. she still was. is. so that left baseball.

“where are we?” she asks from beside him, leaning into his shoulder to take the weight off her feet. they’d gotten good at this, this wandering thing. he wonders if she misses her heels.

“i don’t know,” he says, kicking at the sandy dirt pit they’ve stumbled into.

“a fire?” she asks because assuming the worst was not cynicism, not anymore. it was survival.

“possibly.”

he squats to run his fingers through the dirt (ash?). he pictures burning buildings and broken bones as she lowers herself next to him. a tired game, the solving of improbable and unnecessary mysteries. clues that always led back to themselves, in the end. skinner had once told him that if he was locked in an empty room, he’d still find something to investigate. it hadn’t been a compliment. he wonders where he’d died, hopes it was quick. scully still prays, but he doesn’t see the point.

his fingers hit bone. he stifles a sigh. they’d stumbled upon too many bodies on this unconventional road trip. another archeological dig they’d wandered into by accident.

“scully,” he starts. he’s too tired to bury this one properly. he wants to tell her they should just move on. will he mean it in every sense of the term?

he realizes the bone doesn’t feel like bone at all.

“scully,” he says, louder, excited. his voice cracks, unused to speaking above a whisper. they spoke mostly in sighs and muttered sentiments. he knows they could scream if they wanted to, but it would feel disrespectful, like spitting in a graveyard.

“did you find something?”

“i know where we are.” he stands up, pulling her with him and using his feet to uncover his discovery. buried treasure, he thinks. how childish. he’s smiling.

“mulder?” fear tipping into the edge of her voice. she’s perpetually worried about him. her fingers ache like she'e been playing tug of war. they burn from trying to keep them together, keep them both sane.

he uncovers home plate.

she looks from it to him and back again. a smile sidesteps her lips, but she manages a brightness in her eyes that is not tears.

“oh,” she says.

“who would have thought?”

“baseball.”

“didn’t i tell you baseball is forever, scully?”

“no,” she says, looking at him with the wonder she used to save for invisible men and miracle children.

“i meant to.”

he’d meant to tell her a lot of things. he likes to tell himself there is still time. 

“america’s favorite past time,” she muses and means: there is no america. is it ironic or sad?

he’s scanning the diamond, because it is a diamond. rough around the edges and dusty, but the shape is familiar. it feels like summer.  they’d walked through the seasons.

//

the bat was too small and angry, muted silver. he unearths it from next to the crumpled remains of a backboard with a wild cry of joy. she'd found the ball, ripped up and raw, it's insides spilling from it like guts, and presented it to him like a diamond ring. he'd kissed her. 

they did not think about sunday morning practices or the little boy who'd twisted the bat in his sweaty palms, swallowed hard and shaken off his father's slap on the back. they don't think about how ludicrous it is to play games after the apocalypse. they mostly don't think about this. instead he thinks about calculating the curve of her spine as she presses against him, about her drunken, tumbling laugh as they'd whacked at the ball.

he wants do say: do you, do you, do you remember? 

but he know she does. she does. 

"whose gonna pitch for us?" she asks.  

"i think we're on our own." 

utterly, completely, entirely. 

//

his father had once told him baseball was a weary man's game. too much standing around, not enough running. his father had been a football man. but he was right. because here they were, at the end of the world, inexplicably, ridiculously, playing baseball. weary doesn't even begin to describe them.

he thinks the of the world is an odd expression, one more fitting for hypotheticals than reality. if the world ended than they are the epilogue. the after the happily ever after. the part people skip at the end of books. the world does not end, he knows now. not even when it should. 

she pitches first and she's terrible. she can throw hard, harder than he can maybe, but her aim is loose and wild. she strikes him out anyways and they switch places. she destroys the ball on first contact, it bursts into pieces like a comet into flames in mid-air. she'd been holding out on him, before. 

 ****"no way," he says as she raises an eyebrow, puts her hands on her hips.

"what?" 

"don't play innocent. you knocked the crap out of that. you killed it. who taught you to hit a baseball, scully?" 

she shrugs, says: "it's easy. hips before hands." 

//

baseball fields at night are always felt field-of-dreams-haunted, but none more so than this one. empty and grey, echoes that contorted and expanded over left field. they played catch with shadows. silhouettes bleeding into each other as he put his arms around her waist.

"how are we going to play without a ball?" she whispers as he places his hands above hers on the bat. 

"shh," he says. "listen." 

runner on third is leading, one strike, no outs, their team is ahead. they're going to put the ball right between first and second and send that sucker home. can she see it? yes, she can see it. 

wait for the pitch. they swing. 

"did we hit it?" 

"i don't know. did we?" 

"yeah," she breathes. "we hit it." 

they play that way instead, and they're very good. they hardly strike out. they hit a line drive down the third baseline, their hips twisting in tandem, her back pressed to his chest and then she starts to cry. this is the apocalypse, he thinks. this is life after extinction. this is wavering, birds-nest peace and her tears making parallel lines in the dust on her cheeks.  **  
**

"hey," he says, softly, into her hair. "anyone ever tell you there's no crying in baseball?" 

you talk too much, she tells him. focus on the game. 

okay, so there are two strikes. bases loaded. they're down for the count. this is their last shot. the pitcher winds up (can she see him? yes) and winds up again. eyes on the ball. 

he says: "home run, scully."

she laughs and it sounds like the roar of a crowd. she laughs and reinvents a population. what a combination. the apocalypse, he thinks, and a little baseball.

or maybe it was the other way around. 

 

// fin. 


End file.
